


Constants

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 10:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7680760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how it's supposed to work: McCree gets shot at, McCree shoots back. McCree gets shot at, Hanzo shoots back. </p><p>Not McCree gets shot at, Hanzo takes the bullet for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constants

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks everyone for their support. You can find me on Tumblr at this same URL.

Hanzo takes a bullet for him on a Thursday.

It’s ridiculous, McCree thinks, because if anyone should be taking bullets it’s him, the guy in the line of fire who is supposed to be shot at. It’s been his role since Blackwatch: be colorful, attract fire, send it right back at them before they get a lucky shot. People like Hanzo are supposed to stay their distance, to deal with assholes who are too distracted by McCree’s bright red serape to notice a flutter of gold ribbon in the air. It’s how it worked. It’s how it’s supposed to work. McCree gets shot at, McCree shoots back. McCree gets shot at, Hanzo shoots back.

Not McCree gets shot at, Hanzo takes the bullet for him.

He doesn’t expect it, when Hanzo flies into his sight of vision out of nowhere. Nor does he expect the gunshot that follows, the sound that rings in the air from another sniper. When Hanzo collapses, right to his knees, it is only years of battlefield experience that make McCree quick enough to drag them both for cover.

When he coms Mercy, his hand are covered in blood.

They make it, because life isn’t  always cruel to Jesse McCree. Lena deals with whoever was waiting on the roof, Angela gets there in time to whisk the archer away, and McCree recovers his senses enough to take back to the field and score a victory for the mission report. When the field clears and Genji spots him, he’s the one who has to tell him the blood on his hands isn’t his own.

Genji does not wait with him, going to find Angela and his brother. McCree does not blame him. Instead, he slumps against a wall. Wishes for one of the cigars he promised Hanzo to give up months ago.

“ _Those will kill you_ ,” Hanzo had told him. Now, standing under the hot summer sun, McCree feels sick. Thinks of a gunshot in the air, blood on his hands, smoke hanging low and his arm, he can’t feel it-

McCree closes his eyes, gripping the wall for support. Memory is a bitch that never gives up. McCree is sure it will spend his lifetime reminding him of his mistakes.

Hanzo lives, the gunshot brutal but not lethal. No lingering damage, thank God, but he’s gonna have a nasty scar. McCree knows what it will look like as Angela tells him: he’s seen the same wounds on his own skin. A starburst mark will linger near Hanzo’s shoulder, just as they rest across McCree’s torso, his leg, and his good arm.

McCree wants to throw up. He almost does and hates himself for it. Where is the cowboy now, brave in the face of danger? Where is the soldier, hardened and ready for anything? That’s what this situation needs, what Hanzo needs.

Not Jesse McCree, almost forty and still scared as a dog.

“You can’t do this again,” McCree says when Hanzo wakes up, after he’s done thanking whatever being above spared him another tragedy. Hanzo just stares at him blankly, and McCree has a feeling it isn’t due to the shitton of medication Angela has him on. “I ain’t worth more than you. You know that right?”

Hanzo is silent for a long moment. McCree’s gut twists. Because he thought the were over this, the self-punishment, the determination to perish for one’s sins-

“My goal was not to take the bullet myself,” Hanzo says at last and McCree can breathe again. Not comfortably, but enough to not hyperventilate. “I was out of arrows and the sniper clearly had a shot. I had to get you out of the way.”

McCree drags his hand down his face. If his palm comes away wet, neither mention it.

“You coulda died.”

“You would have died if I did not.” He looks to McCree and his expressions softens, if only a fraction. “She had sight of your head. Better my shoulder than your skull.”

McCree wants to make a joke, to say something about “having a thick skull” but he comes up empty. Too many years putting on a smile hits him at once. He bends over, head in his hands. He’s suddenly very glad he’s not wearing his hat.

“Don’t do that again,” he says. “I can’t take it. I’m too old.” And he is, all things considered. He feels too old to keep losing people like this, to keep having pieces of his life ripped away in an instant. At some point, he needs stability, more than sky above him as a constant. Two decades of fighting and pain should have earned him this at the least.

“Jesse McCree.” He doesn’t look up, knowing what answer is coming. The only answer that could come from such a request. McCree should know: he’d say the same. They’re too alike in that regard. “I will never apologize for saving your life, even if it costs me my own. And you are foolish to believe otherwise.”

McCree closes his eyes, resting his good hand on the edge of the bed. He feels Hanzo’s hand rest over it. Still alive. Despite everything.

“Yeah,” McCree says. “I guess I am.”

That night, asleep in the chairs across from the hospital bed, he dreams of sleeping underneath the stars, the lights constant as the Earth shifts around him.


End file.
